Michael Jackson is Buried, Al Sharpton Tweets During Funeral
Michael Jackson was finally laid to rest at a private evening funeral at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California last night. People magazine reports that Lisa Marie Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Macaulay Culkin, Chris Tucker and Mila Kunis were all in attendance and were kept waiting for over an hour in the heat waiting for the Jackson family to arrive. Because of the wildfires in Southern California, the air is hot and smokey. The family allowed journalists to film up until the time that the hearse arrived.
Jackso's three children then placed a crown on their father's coffin to mark his status as the King of Pop.
After a prayer by Pastor Lucius Smith and a gospel number sung by Gladys Knight, Clifton Davis performed the Jackson 5 song he wrote, "Never Can Say Goodbye." Jackson’s father Joseph and the Rev. Al Sharpton addressed the mourners, as did close friends and family.
After the ceremony, the brothers carried the casket to the Grand Mausoleum, where at 9:43 p.m. Jackson entered his final resting place.
Afterwards, his family issued statement to "once again thank all of Michael Jackson's fans around the world for their generous outpouring of support during this terribly difficult time. Their expressions of love for Michael and his music have sustained the Jackson Family."
Here's a clip from the funeral:
In what has to be some kind of first, Al Sharpton actually sent funeral update tweets from his Twitter account during the funeral saying "I am sitting at the burial services of Michael Jackson. I am talking to actress lisaraye mc coy who was at NAN when MJ came and tom mesereau [the attorney that defended Jackson in his child molestation trial]. What MJ went through was so unfair, yet he succeeded. In the end, he was the biggest artist ever. He faced the headwinds but he made it....MICHAEL JACKSON HAS BEENb [sic] LAID TO REST."
